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“What did you do?” Anthony asks as he throws himself into the chair behind his desk. “Mother is beside herself –”
Colin shrugs unrepentantly. “I wanted to get married sooner, so I said what I needed to say to make that happen.”
“You may be the first man in London to have falsely admitted to misbehavior – and to move up a wedding, at that,” Benedict says in disbelief.
“I didn’t say I didn’t –” Colin makes air quotes, lips twitching – “‘misbehave.’ I just . . . may have possibly misled them as to the whens and wherefores of any such misbehavior.”
Benedict lets out a hoot of laughter. Colin didn’t precisely confirm it when they’d met for their bout of fencing, but it was quite clear to him that the real reason the guests of honor had left their engagement ball had nothing to do with a headache. “That good, eh?” he jokes. “Must have been, to have you running even faster for the yoke.”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Colin says haughtily, but the look in his eyes speaks volumes.
Benedict wrinkles his nose, but chuckles all the same.
“Will wonders never cease?” Seems even Anthony can no longer be quite as irritated. It isn’t surprising; Colin’s always been able to charm his way out of trouble and, though they’ll never admit it aloud, there’s something oddly touching about his eagerness.
He’s always been a bit more confident than Anthony that their brother would find his happiness in the end – over time, Anthony’s become as much of a fretting mother hen as their actual mother, if marginally better at hiding it – but that’s not to say that Benedict never did some worrying of his own. So, Colin’s obvious contentment is more than a little bit of a relief to both of them.
“Anthony!” calls Kate from the hall.
“Duty calls,” Anthony sighs as he rises to his feet, but he’s smiling. “Bedtime stories. Don’t drain my liquor cabinet while I’m gone.”
“Had to give Mother something to fuss about, I suppose. I imagine you didn’t quite know what to do with yourself after making a choice everyone approved of this time around,” Benedict teases when they’re alone.
It truly feels like another lifetime ago that his little brother had been engaged to the former Miss Thompson. As if something from a dream. (Well, more like a nightmare, really.)
Colin gives him a lopsided smile. “I won’t deny that it was good to have the news greeted with joy rather than shock and dismay. But . . .” He shakes his head. “It’s the strangest thing, but I honestly hadn’t given it a thought once Pen agreed to marry me. The fact that I was engaged once before, I mean. I’m glad, I suppose, that we didn’t get very far with planning anything and not just because it’s damned exhausting.”
“It means there are still some things that you’ll only share with Penelope,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s the least she deserves,” he adds unthinkingly.
Colin cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
He’s always focused on that exquisitely uncomfortable moment when Penelope overheard Colin say that he wouldn’t marry her, when he’d realized that the poor girl was in love with his brother, that he’s never stopped to think how much worse that unintentionally cruel declaration – the longtime friend with whom she was in love vehemently dismissing her as a matrimonial prospect – must have hurt given that Colin had once been so eager to marry her cousin, who’d been nearly a stranger to him, that he’d been prepared to run off to Gretna Green. So fixated on the girl even after the ensuing scandal that he’d gone to see her at her marital home.
It was one thing to tease his little brother about the irony of his words that day on their mother’s steps, but it seems pointlessly unkind to share this thought with him, prodding at an old bruise with nothing to be gained from it; Colin is still far more sensitive than he likes to let on nowadays. They’re getting their happy ending, after all. He chews on his lip.
He realizes his trepidation must show in his expression when Colin’s smile slides right off his face. “Ben?”
“I – er, well . . .” He trails off awkwardly.
“Out with it,” Colin insists, uncharacteristically short.
“Between you nearly marrying her cousin and shouting that you’d never marry her, let it never be said that the course of true love ran smooth for the two of you,” he finally says in a rush, shrugging as he tries to play it off casually. “But all’s well that ends well.”
Colin inhales sharply, hand unconsciously moving to cover his heart.
“Colin,” he says quietly, leaning forward in his chair. “I didn’t –”
“You’re right,” Colin whispers. “I didn’t think. I didn’t – I didn’t let myself think.” He laughs humorlessly, shaking his head as his hand still rubs restlessly over his chest, losing himself in thought.
—
It’s hard to believe, given just how much of a point of contention Lady Whistledown’s most infamous bombshell had been between them, but he has somehow managed not to think of his short-lived first engagement at all since Penelope accepted his proposal.
And yet it was so: once upon a time, Colin had proposed, Miss Marina Thompson had accepted, and he’d publicly declared his intention and desire to marry her in front of his family and friends –
Including Penelope, who loved him.
Who’d later nearly ruined her family – herself – to spare him the consequences of his own folly and Marina’s deception born of desperation. Something he had the audacity to be angry about and ungrateful for not so long ago.
After publicly embarrassing her by announcing that he certainly wouldn’t marry her several years later.
No, not just embarrassing her. Hurting her. It had never been his intention; even then, he’d cared about her – she was one of his dearest friends – and he’d hated the mere possibility of hurting her feelings. He’d been more mortified than he’d ever been in his life or ever has been since and had sincerely apologized for it. An apology that Penelope graciously accepted. But the fact remains that, no matter what she said to smooth over an uncomfortable moment, he had hurt her feelings. He’d hurt her. His Penelope.
The woman he loves.
And the idea of being responsible for her pain guts him.
The pang in his heart at the thought of it is so sharp and sudden it steals his breath.
He leaves without waiting for Anthony to return from the nursery, without even finishing his drink.
Perhaps the worst part of it all is that he has to live with it, because there’s no undoing any of it.
Sit with it, because it seems cruel to force either issue all these years later, to force her to relive painful moments from their past to relieve his conscience.
It would hardly be in keeping with the loving and cherishing bit of the vows he’ll be making very, very soon.